ly Word which he certainly did not sincerely give to it
himself. When he came to the end of a passage which he considered
required expounding, he would take off his reading spectacles and
wipe them with a corner of his wife's white apron.

"Now, I have explained many times before about this, bairns," he
was saying as he looked towards Thora and Tom. "It is a rule, a
golden rule, that the merest child might understand. Nothing can be
more beautiful or more important, and it just contains these few
words: 'Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you.'
Now keep this precept in mind, all of you, for ye canna
misunderstand it. But, just to make the thing clear--

"Never mind the cat, Thora; just pay attention to the lesson--

"Just to make the thing clear, let us suppose an example. Now,
then, supposin', for instance, that Thora here saw a basin full o'
milk with thick cream on the top o' it, and that her teeth were
watering for just one lick. She ought to say to herself: 'Now,
here's a basin full o' good cream; I'd like fine to take one lick
of it. But it's the cream for making the butter of. Now, supposin'
I was your mother, how would I like my daughter Thora to come
and--'"

"Oh! Look, look!" cried Thora, "pussy's tail's burnin'!"

"Confound you, Thora!" exclaimed her father, angered at this
interruption. "Can you not pay attention, and let pussy mind her
own tail? I say, if you were your mother, how would you like your
daughter Thora to lick the cream?"

"Tut, goodman!" interposed Mrs. Kinlay, "what does the lass ken
about being a mother? Go on with the reading."

"Odd, goodwife, I'm but supposin' the thing; and the plainer it is
the better, and the easier to understand. However, what verse was
it, Thora?"

"It was the fourteenth you left off at," said Thora.

"Aweel, then, the fifteenth: 'Now, when he'--Odd, but I think we
read that before."

"Nay, you didna read it before, father, for it was the fourteenth
verse you left off at."

"Nay, I'm sure it couldn't be that, for I remember readin' 'Now,
when he,' before."

"But I'm sure, father, ye're wrong," persisted Thora. "Look you if
the fourteenth doesn't end with 'people,' and 'people' was the last
word you read."

"'People, people!'" said Carver, searching for the place. "Odd,
lassie, I see no 'people.' There's one verse that ends with
'people,' but it's not the fourteenth. It had been that, ye silly
lass, instead o' the fourteenth."